Pages

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Get My Wife a Shisha!

Gender segregation and the male guardianship system in Saudi
Arabia are issues that I have complained about many times in the past.Just when one might think things are
improving for women here, this male domination and control mentality rears its
ugly head again.

Earlier this week, it was reported in the news here that
women are no longer permitted to go out with girlfriends to enjoy smoking
shisha, unless she is accompanied by her legal male guardian who must order it
for her.

The ramifications of this are really
confusing, as many hasty decisions here in KSA are.If every woman who wishes to smoke shisha has
to drag her husband, brother or son with her, the result will be scores of men
and women mingling together in public! Didn't they think of that?

The message here is that women are not capable of making
their own decisions and that men are more intelligent and superior in every way
and must decide what is best for their wives, daughters, and sisters,
regardless of the women’s wishes.I don’t
buy into the BS that a man needs to decide what is best for me.

By now we all know the harm that smoking can cause to
humans.But as long as there is no law
against smoking, adults should have the right to decide for themselves whether
to smoke or not.I am an adult and I am
perfectly capable of making my own decisions regarding my life, my image, and
my health.

Ahmed Al-Shammari tweeted, “I am
totally supporting this idea because it is sad when I see young women smoking
shisha in public.It makes them look
cheap and easy.”It’s okay
for men to smoke shisha because it makes them look cool, or what?Sadly this is the mentality of so many ignorant and backward men in Saudi Arabia.

I’m so tired of these double
standards for men and women.

Gender segregation is carried to such an unhealthy extreme
in this country, it has resulted in an alarmingly high divorce rate, daily harassment
of women, and immature men who misbehave. This gender segregation policy actually enables men to continue behaving badly instead of allowing them to behave normally.

The real issue here is control.Men here want to control the lives of women
in every way they possibly can.It’s insulting,
tiresome, and more ridiculous as times goes on.

When my husband asks if I'll ever consent to go back to Saudi to visit family there my answer is 'very reluctantly'. Even he has a hard time with it so we continue to encourage family members to meet with us in Dubai or almost anywhere else in the ME that is not so insane.

Search

Meet Susie of Arabia

DO NOT COPY

DO NOT COPY

The entire content of this website is copyrighted to Susie Khalil and should never be reproduced/copied to another website without written authorization from the owner. Websites that are scraping content in the form of RSS feeds, bots, or manual methods will be reported to their web host with a DMCA take down notice.